A Death In The Family Analysis

In life, struggles are meant to happen in order to grow as a person. Whether it is in families, school, or even something as little as not figuring something out, struggles do occur. Depending on how the person takes the situation, struggles can make a person come out stronger than ever, or it can consume the person in the worst way. Some people turn to religion to help get through a struggle, it can be a source of comfort or to find answers. A Death in the Family shows the different ways that the character’s struggle through their sorrows and how they incorporate religion in order to get through their struggles. James Agee writes a tale that is sure to break hearts while incorporating a heartland area of Appalachia.
A Death in the Family …show more content…
He finds the news out at breakfast when his mother explains that his father, Jay, went to see his father, Grandpa Follet because he is sick and getting old. Because of this conversation, this sparks the topic of death and what happens after death from a religious point of view. Rufus, frustrated, is trying to take all this information in. As they talk about a religious aspect of life, Rufus and his mother are talking about the Devil and God. “…The Devil is everywhere too – everywhere except Heaven, that is – and he is always tempting us. What’s tempt? Tempt is, well the Devil tempts us when there is something we want to do, but we know it is bad’” (Agee 54-55). He is struggling to understand the difference between God and the Devil and why his father is gone. “Why does God let us do bad things?” “Because He…he does not want us to do bad things, but to know good from bad and be good of our own free choice.” “Why?”… “God does not believe in the easy way,” she said” (55). Only being a six-year-old boy and he is trying to understand what happened to his father but also trying to understand religion. For his age, he is very intelligent but is still struggling to understand why the Devil took his father away from him and his